Repartitioning in windows 7

i have a laptop having genuine copy of windows installed the problem is that it has only one drive now i want to make more partitions but there is danger of loosing the genuine windows during partitioning process. is there any method to make partitions without any trouble remember that it has only one drive i.e C

Staff MemberPremium SupporterMicrosoft MVP

First of all your laptop should have been supplied with a recovery partition from which you can completely recover your Windows installation. It should also have come with a utility to burn secure dvd copies of this recovery partition in case you completely lose your hard drive. You should burn these disks before you do anything else. (See you user guide).

You can then secure your existing system drive using something like Acronis True Image (full working trial copy from here):

The image created can be burned to dvd or, more conveniently if you have one, and external hard drive.

The most important thing is that you can recover both your op sys and any data stored on the drive in case of a problem and the steps I've just described are to enable you to do that. However, all being well you shouldn't have any problems and should be able to modify your partitions (shrinking existing ones, creating new ones etc) using something Easeus Partition Manager (home edition) free from here:

2. Click on Computer Management in Administrative Tools, then close the Administrative Tools window.

3. In the left pane under Storage, click on Disk Management.

4. In the middle pane, right click on the partition that you want to shrink and click on Shrink Volume.

5. Type in how many MB (1 GB = 1024 MB) of the available shrink space shown that you want to shrink the partition or volume by to be used for the new unallocated space, then click on the Shrink button. (See screenshot below)

The size of the available shrink space can be restricted by the amount of space currently allocated to on the hard drive for the virtual memory page file, System Protection maximum storage space size, and hibernation files. The location of the files on the hard drive plays a big part here because these files are marked as unmovable, and Disk Management is unable to relocate them. As such, if these unmovable files are located in the middle of the total amount of free space on the disk, then only the amount of free space on the other side (to the right) of these files will actually be available for the new partition. This will result in you showing that you have x amount of free space, but not being able to use it for your partition. The only way around this is to use a 3rd party hard drive partition management program, or setup the partition when installing Vista.

6. The selected partition (step 4) has now been shrunk to create a new empty unallocated space. You can use this new unallocated space to create a new partition with.

7. Close the Computer Management window.

CREATE NEW PARTITION

Using Disk Management1. You will first need to shrink a partition or volume from the free space on a disk to create unallocated space on that disk to use to create the new partition or volume with on the same disk.

3. Click on Computer Management in Administrative Tools, then close the Administrative Tools window.

4. In the left pane under Storage, click on Disk Management.

5. In the middle pane, right click on the empty unallocated partition or volume and click on New Simple Volume.

6. Click on the Next button.

7. Type in how many MB (1 GB = 1024 MB) you want to use from the unallocated partition to create the new partition with, then click on the Next button. NOTE:If you want to use all of the unallocated partition to create the new partition with, then type all of the maximum disk space shown for the unallocated partition. If you do not use all of the maximum disk space, then you can use the left over space from the unallocted partition to create another new partition with.8. Select an available drive letter that you want to be assigned to the new partition in Computer, then click on the Next button.

9. Type in a volume label name that you want for the new partition, check the Perform a quick format box, and click on the Next button.

10. Click on the Finish button.

11. The new primary partition or volume has now been created with the assigned unallocted partition space (step 7).

Staff MemberPremium SupporterMicrosoft MVP

It may be that the inbuilt disk and partition management features will enable you to do the job but it does have some serious limitations - the main one being that it cannot always handle available space to the full so you can get situations where, for instance, it will report that drive C has 40GB used of 250GB but then won't let you shrink it by 200GB - it might only allow, say, 100GB. By all means try it using the excellent detailed guide given by pcs3657 but if you experience any such problems then resort to Easeus.